PREHISTORIC ART. 653 



low and jarrned, and far from iuviting to delicate, lips. Their toues, however, are 

 siugulai'ly soft aud mellow. 



Eeferring- to the drawings, lie says: 



a represents the largest. Eaeh bone is 12 inches long and three-eighths of an inch 

 bore. They are united by twine neatly wound aud worked. On the back are finger- 

 holes, shown at h ; these were stopped up ; perhaps they were experimental addi- 

 tions of some Brazilian Prononms. The construction of the sounding or whistle 

 part is seen at c, a cone of resinous cement being secured immediately under the 

 orifice. The ridge of cement rises to the center of the tube. The instrument is 

 played by blowing through the upper (md, as in a chirinet. e is a smaller Hute, to 

 be blown at either end, /has a swelled wooden mouthpiece, with no side opening. 

 Dual bone liutes with finger holes are yet in use in the northern provinces, besides 

 bamboo flutes and instruments with which the voices of wild beasts are imitated 

 with singular accuracy.' 



PERU. 



Whistlim/ hottles. — Tliere are in the Museum a number of pottery 

 bottles, obtained from ancient burial places in Peru, which are capable 

 of emitting- musical sounds. Many of these vessels are double, with 

 an interior connection at i)oint of contact, and those which are not 

 double have two projections, one being the neck or mouth proper and 

 the other terminating in the figure of a bird or animal which contains 

 the whistling apparatus. The human form is also represented. It has 

 been said that when pouring the water out, a sound imitating the note 

 or cry of the bird or animal represented is produced.^ 



In experimenting with the bottles or instruments about to be 

 described, the author has not been able to obtain any sound by pour- 

 ing the water out. If the vessels are submerged in water, leaving the 

 whistle above, their sounds or notes are given while the air is forced 

 out by the incoming water. The clearest tone, however, is emitted by 

 blowing, and the notes indicated in the accompanying scales were 

 obtained in that way, using the open neck as a mouthpiece. The 

 descriptions of these vessels by some writers (Boll*rt aud von Tschudi) 

 hardly give due credit to the aboriginal potter. The mechanism by 

 which the sound or note is produced is something more than a hole or 

 opening through which the air is forced, for it is constructed on the 

 principle of the flageolet, as are the instruments from Mexico and Cen- 

 tral America previously described. On some of these vessels two notes 

 can be produced, varying from a semitone to a major third above the 

 lowest tone (tig. 314). In all cases the upper note is made by using 

 more force in blowing. In the specimens which are indicated as emit- 

 ting but one tone, no amount of manipulation will give anything else, 

 as more or less force in blowing causes the tone to break. As a result 

 of these trials, I am inclined to believe that the objects here described 

 were intended to serve a double purpose — as water bottles and also as 

 whistles. Carl Engel,'* in peaking of the ancient wind instruments of 



'Ewbank, Life in Brazil, p. 121. 



^Squier, E. G., Peru, Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, p. 179. 



' Musical Instruments in the .South Kensington Museum, pp. 70, 71. 



